When starting one’s own business, the journey is often a lonely one. The small business owner’s family views the leap into entrepreneurship as a risky, maybe irresponsible act, and perhaps this is where self-doubt starts rearing its ugly head.
Many women entrepreneurs join networking events to learn from one another, enhance sales’ opportunities and to lessen the loneliness that comes with start-ups. How often do entrepreneurs ask for help, not necessarily funding but also support in terms of knowledge, skill and more importantly personal development. As a business owner everything starts with you and if you are OK, your employees will be OK and your customers will in turn be OK. A simplistic formula but one that highlights that entrepreneurs need to be in touch with who they are in order for them to ask for help when needed . Few of the entrepreneurs I have spoken to have engaged a coach or mentor. to assist with this. Questions on how does one find one, how much will it cost, what value will it bring to my business, are often asked.
Other challenges often faced by start-ups are: how do I set up my website?; how do I cost my product? How do I hire competent employees with the budget I have; how can I be more innovative? These are a few of the operational decisions the entrepreneur has to make every day. But are we starting at the right place?
Shouldn’t we invest time and effort in designing a HELP strategy at the same time as developing a vision and mission strategy? What do I mean by this?
Tips on developing a HELP strategy
First, acknowledge that you are going to need help in your business to succeed, in a variety of forms. We don’t know everything and cannot do it all by ourselves. Secondly, think about times you have asked for help, how did you do it?; why did you ask for help; who did you ask for help; how did you feel when asking for help? Some people are good at asking for help, others have learned to be fiercely independent and “just do it yourself”. Asking for help is often seen as a weakness and the assumption is that we need to be in control of everything. Once you have identified how you feel about asking for help, you can go ahead and plan how you will do it.
Going it alone
If we manage our business solely by ourselves without the necessary support, we will soon find the following thugs in our neighbourhood: Burnout around the corner; Frustration down the road and Unbalanced work-life in the next street.
Asking for help builds relationships; it says “I need you”. We all want to be needed and most people will see how they can help. As the business world becomes more individualistic and competitive, isn’t this an opportunity for small businesses to become more collaborative? We should follow that age old piece of advice: “Ask and you will receive”.